This Is Grief Too with Laverne McKinnon

Hosted by Laverne McKinnon

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Oct 2026

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This Is Grief Too explores the human side of professional loss, career grief, and what’s next. Laverne McKinnon shares stories, honest reflections, and practical tools to help you make sense of what happened, rebuild, and move forward. thisisgrieftoo.substack.com

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October 5, 20268 min

You’re Fine. So Why Are You Crying? 😭

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thisisgrieftoo.substack.com If you’re familiar with the 110 freeway in Los Angeles, you may know that the on-ramps are unbelievably short and ridiculously tight — because they were designed when cars topped out around 45 mph. Some of those on-ramps require a full stop and then a balls out sprint to get to at least 60 mph within 15 feet before merging into speeding traffic. Yowsa. So you might be able to imagine my terror on a lovely Saturday morning when my car broke down just as I was Lando Norris-ing my way onto the 110. My car would not get past 15 mph no matter how hard I pressed the gas. And then the steering wheel started to freeze up. (I later learned that new cars go “limp” when there’s a system disruption. Am I the only one who thinks that this is a very bad idea?) I tell my 16-year-old daughter Aurora that something funky is happening and I pull over. There’s no way we’re going to make the martial arts class we signed up for while the dashboard is flashing: hybrid system malfunction . As I’m digging around for my AAA membership number, I’m trying to stay calm while cars are zipping by us at 70 to 80 miles per hour. I swear they’re moving in closer and faster than my freshman-year homecoming date. My RAV4 is shaking and rocking from the turbulence. I’m desperate to know how quickly a tow truck can get to me. Turns out pretty quickly. AAA says a driver will arrive in about 15 minutes, which is great because the AC is not working anymore. Aurora and I have rings of sweat under our pits and my boobs are dripping . When Martell shows up with the flatbed, he’s got a big smile, sparkly blue eyes, and competency covers him like butter on popcorn. Tears bubble up, but I squash them. We’re fine now. Martell secures the car lickety split and we’re off to the service place within five minutes. The AC in his cab is crisp and we chat about his three children and his dog and how he works 12 hour days and loves to take his kids to the park but they're growing up so fast and they have their friends and hobbies. He gives Aurora a miniature pack of UNO cards and lets me choose a Matchbox car. After we drop off the RAV4 and get a rental, Aurora and I walk-run to the nearest IHOP for a stack of comfort pancakes. It’s been a stressful morning, we debate ordering the max: three full stacks = 15 pancakes. (I will not share the results of that debate.) When we get home, I feel those tears start to bubble again. It’s interesting because they seem to happen when I’m safe. I can’t help but wonder what exactly am I crying about? Turns out holding it together isn’t necessarily the problem. Never having a place to stop holding it together might be. A lot of what I’ve been holding together the last 18 months has been pressing at the seams. Aurora being diagnosed with a chronic illness, both my dogs dying last Fall, navigating a lawsuit against my insurance company, selling our home, moving … Which made me curious about the idea of a “good cry.” Is there actually such a thing? Does crying really provide the emotional release we think it does? Researchers have been studying crying for decades, and it’s not completely true that crying is a catharsis. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. When people look back on crying, they often say they felt better afterward. But when the researchers actually watched what happened to people immediately after they cried, they often felt worse. So why do I sometimes intentionally seek out a movie, say Terms of Endearment , to help me cry? It turns out, it’s not uncommon to deliberately do things that help us open the floodgates. Not to be morbid, but watching Shirley MacLaine lose Debra Winger does it for me. And while I’m there, I can cry about everything else too. The things that didn’t go the way I wanted. The decisions I didn’t want to have to make. The uncertainty I’ve learned to live with. The endings I chose and the ones I didn’t. I’d been telling myself that I didn’t have anything to cry about with my car breaking down because everything worked out. We were safe. The car would be fixed. I ate a lot of maple syrup with a dollop of pancakes with my kid. Nothing terrible happened. But “nothing terrible happened” and “that was a lot for my nervous system” can apparently coexist. There’s actually a concept in psychology called “expressive flexibility.” The basic idea is that being emotionally healthy means we can hold it together when we need to and have the big feelings when we need to. It really depends on the situation. On the side of the 110 freeway with my daughter while cars are flying past us at 80 miles an hour? Excellent time to hold it together. Talking to AAA? Hold it together. Figuring out the rental? Still useful. Safe at home, curled up in bed, watching Terms of Endearment ? I don’t need to hold it together. We do this at work all the time. We get the email during the middle of the day saying HR wants to Zoom at 5 pm. We get blindsided at the meeting with news that the project has been defunded. We get called out for a misstep in front of the entire department. We function. Sometimes beautifully. But functioning and feeling aren’t the same thing. Maybe that’s why that Saturday morning got to me. The car didn’t cause 18 months of emotion. It just happened to be the thing that made me realize how much energy I’d been using to hold everything together. I don’t know that the scientific evidence lets me call what happened a “cathartic cry.” But I know that 90 minutes later, I felt different. You Might Also Like: JOURNAL PROMPTS Here are 4 journal prompts for paid This is Grief Too members. Take a few minutes to notice what you’ve been holding together—and what it might be costing you.

September 14, 20267 min

What Letting Go Helped Me See 🦋

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thisisgrieftoo.substack.com I’m a late-to-the-party big believer in taking a break from the normal routines and structures of life to gain fresh perspective. This year, I took about five weeks off from Substack and client work over the summer. The intention was to create space to move out of the home we’ve been in for 28 years so we could radically downsize and try a completely different lifestyle. We’ve left the gorgeous wildlife corridor and serenity of Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills and are now renting a super cool loft in the Brewery Artist Complex right next to the 5 freeway in Los Angeles. I’ve gone from solo nature walks to a vibrant, dynamic community of over 200 artists. My mind, body, and heart are adjusting to the vibe and energy, but my gut says that it’s the right move, especially when I sit on our porch with my cup of tea and watch folks hauling creations, walking dogs, and bartering for goods and services. It’s magical in a whole new way. The stress, though, of the amount of change has got me down to my high school weight. Seems I’m purging more than old clothes and tschotchkes and notebooks and toiletries from fancy hotels. I never thought I was a hoarder until it was time to move. What I’ve also realized is that it’s time to let go of a part of my coaching identity: Moonshot Mentor. It was a name that a former client pitched me, and I felt honored that she would see me in that way — and I really do love helping people go after their big dreams. But what I’m seeing more and more, and what’s really calling out to me, is how every moonshot comes with some form of attachment –- to what achieving that moonshot means to your identity, your purpose, your sense of belonging, your legacy, financial security, recognition. You can’t care about something and not be attached. So when something matters, losing it matters too. I’ve heard from so many people who have experienced professional loss that they’ve felt traumatized, or punished, or left behind as a result of what happened. They’ve felt angry, confused, adrift, and despondent. They’ve lost confidence, their sense of self, stability, or a future. They swing back and forth between “this is all my fault” to “these things happen.” I too have felt all these things. And I got stuck for a decade because I treated speed bumps as evidence that I’d done something horrifically wrong, or that I was unlucky, or that I just wasn’t good enough. When I gave myself permission to grieve and took stock of the meaning I’d created from what happened, I was able to course-correct and stop making decisions from a place of fear, feeling less than, and proving myself to others. And I’m not the only one who had to grieve an attachment … * The lawyer who hated his job with every fiber of his being and had to grieve the identity he had established as someone with status and stature before he could become a therapist. * The creative executive who was laid off and couldn’t get a single interview, who grieved the career dream she held since she was a kid. Through mourning, she realized that what she now loved was salesmanship, and that created a new dream. * The director who was publicly fired and grieved the loss of confidence and her belief in fairness. Through mourning, she regained her footing and a fresh set of beliefs before becoming the artistic director of a major theatre. And so, Moonshot Mentor is becoming This Is Grief Too. This Is Grief Too is a reader-supported publication. Subscribe for new posts about professional loss, career grief, and what’s next. While mentoring moonshots will always be a part of my work, I’m shifting the primary focus to helping people recognize grief in all forms, not only related to the loss of life. I don’t want anyone to suffer because of unacknowledged loss. I want us to get better at recognizing grief when it shows up outside the places we’ve been taught to look for it. Because when we can notice and name what we’re experiencing, we can stop trying to solve the wrong problem. If you’re already a Moonshot Mentor subscriber, there’s nothing you need to do. You’ll continue to hear from me here, just under a new name, with a broader focus and a new rhythm: * Instead of a long-form piece every week, I’ll send a weekly newsletter with shorter insights, practical tools, career strategy, and cool stuff I find along the way. * Career Conversations is becoming This Is Grief Too: Live . Twice a month, I’ll talk with special guests about the highs and lows of their careers, as well as loss, change, and what comes next. Join us live on Substack, with replays available for paid subscribers. * Paid subscribers will get 1–2 deeper dives each month—in writing, audio, or video—with journal prompts to help you reflect on your own experience. You’ll also receive weekly meditations and Solid Ground , my ongoing guided practice for working through career grief. Each Solid Ground lesson focuses on one piece of the process, with practical tools to help you understand what you’ve lost, make sense of what it stirred up, and move forward with more clarity. I’m still in the early days of adjusting to my new life. I miss the sweet quiet of Laurel Canyon, but I’m learning to love the noise and creative energy of my new home. Apparently, you can grieve what you’ve left behind and be excited about what’s next at the same time. Welcome to This is Grief Too . Join me Friday, September 18th for This Is Grief Too: Live with Stanley C. as we talk about creating a mourning playlist. Have a question you’d like us to answer? Feel free to send it here . Before you rush to figure out what’s next, ask yourself what you’re actually grieving. These three pieces explore some of the places grief can hide – in our identities, our ambitions, and the feeling of being stuck. Is Grief Holding Me Back? What happens when grief keeps us from moving forward? How Your Identity Is Stopping You From Achieving Your Goals What if the identity you’ve built around your goals is part of what’s keeping you stuck? What to Do When Stuck at Work? Sometimes being stuck isn’t a career problem. It’s a purpose problem. This Is Grief Too is a reader-supported publication. Subscribe for new posts about professional loss, career grief, and what’s next. Journal Prompts Here are 3 journal prompts for Solid Ground members. Let’s explore what letting go might help you see about what matters, what you’re grieving, and what wants to change.

September 7, 20267 min

I’m Grieving the Home I Chose to Leave 🏡

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thisisgrieftoo.substack.com I’m in a contorted cat-cow pose holding a toothbrush with my right hand, leaning heavily on my left to take the pressure off my legs, wondering if this is a good choice at this moment in time. The white tile I’m scrubbing is pretty, but man, it is unforgiving on my bones, especially my knees, which are already showing signs of bruising. When I was in high school, I cleaned houses for a summer to make extra cash. Hated it. I do love cleanliness and organization, but don’t love wearing plastic gloves, chipping away at other people’s … stuff. But here I am saying goodbye to 28 years in this home. Getting it ready for our first open house. Will anyone walking through know that we raised our two daughters here? That I spent most of my Hollywood career celebrating and retreating to this oasis during the inevitable turbulent highs and lows? The last several months have been a fugue state. Shadows, echoes, the smell of roasting chicken, far-off laughter haunt and delight me. Why do these particular memories bubble? I do not know. Prepping the house to sell, purging what I thought were treasures, and now I can’t remember why I kept the stuff in the first place: a Russian urn, a tattered white t-shirt, and oh my goodness, so many books. I’ve forced myself to give them away and radically accept that I will not be reading them a second time. After I clean the bathroom, I tackle the window sills. Then the oven. Then a super deep clean of the fridge. I check every nook for cobwebs and wash the kitchen windows a fourth time because I just can’t get those streaks out. I’m saying goodbye. Cleaning my house with a forensic eye for detail is part of my mourning. It reminds me of how, after death, a body is cleaned in many cultures: Muslims practice ghusl , the Jewish tradition of taharah, or the Ancient Egyptians. It’s bringing devotion and sacredness to what might be considered an everyday act. In each room, in every corner, I whisper, “Thank you.” Memories drop in and out, not fully formed, more like pieces of potato chips at the bottom of the Ruffles bag. Wearing onesies on Christmas Day. Rocco running through the living room at full speed. Chuck melting the toaster in the oven (don’t ask). Pizza parties. Pool bar-b-ques. Sunrise walks. The day Roo arrived during lockdown. Mourning is the visible, outward expression of loss. Grieving is the internal response to losing something that we are attached to. Mourning takes many forms. It can be a funeral or a memorial service or planting a tree. Or it can be cleaning the grout in the bathtub. When my mom died, we knew what to do. There are rituals. But there are so many other endings we’re expected to glide through because they’re just a normal part of life — even endings that we have control over. Despite selling our home being my choice (and my husband’s), I still grieve. I was attached to the safety and security of having a house to live in and build a family. I was attached to the serenity and beauty of having a home in the Laurel Canyon wildlife corridor. I was attached to the privacy of living at the end of a long single-lane road. I’m grateful that I can have a good goodbye: one that I get to have agency around and make choices about what that goodbye will look like even if it’s me on my hands and knees scrubbing every inch of the house that has taken care of me for the last 28 years. Maybe someday, I’ll take a drive into Laurel Canyon, and I’ll think, “There was a woman who lived in a house at the end of Crescent Drive. She had a pretty good run.” If you want to dig a bit deeper, check out some previous posts regarding “letting go.” Thanks for being here. I’d love to hear what you think of today’s post, so if you have a question or comment, please share it below. If you’re grieving a loss and could use some support, Solid Ground is my paid Substack subscriber community. It’s a place to make sense of what you’re experiencing, find ways to mourn, and be met with compassion and encouragement. For paid subscribers , I’ve included five journal prompts below to help you dig a little deeper. See you next week!

June 22, 20264 min

What Happened to You at Work Matters (And I Need Your Help)

Hi friend. When I was fired from a job I cared about deeply, I was devastated. At the time, I didn’t have language for what I was experiencing. I thought I needed to get back on the horse, get a thicker skin, and get over it. It took me ten years to realize that I was carrying grief. Career grief. Once I understood that, I got unstuck. I gave myself permission to mourn what had happened and all that had been lost alongside my job title. Today, I’m writing a book with the working title This is Grief, Too, and am fortunate to be represented by awesome agents at Peters Fraser + Dunlop. The book draws not only from my experiences but also from the hundreds of clients, students, and professionals I’ve met over the years who have experienced their own forms of professional heartbreak. Now I’d love to hear from you. I’m looking for stories about career setbacks, disappointments, endings, mistakes, missed opportunities, layoffs, firings, failed projects, dreams that didn’t unfold the way you hoped, or any professional loss that still lingers in your heart and mind. The ones that changed something. The ones that you think about from time to time. Or all the time. The ones that shaped how you see yourself, your work, or your future. If you’re willing, I’d be grateful if you would complete a comprehensive questionnaire and share your story with me. With your permission, portions of your experience may be considered for inclusion in the book and related research. You can participate anonymously if you prefer. After reviewing submissions, I’ll invite up to twenty people to participate in individual 90-minute recorded coaching and research interviews. These one-on-one conversations will help inform the book and may, with your additional consent, be considered for inclusion in future book or audiobook materials. More than anything, my hope is that this work helps us become grief literate. Because what happens to us at work matters. The losses we experience matter. And learning how to acknowledge and mourn professional heartbreak may be one of the most important skills we can develop for a long and meaningful career. Questionnaire Link Thank you for considering it. I’d be honored to hear your story. The gremlins tend to get loudest when we’re standing at the edge of change. That’s why this month’s Solid Ground lesson is called Meet Your Gremlins . We’ll explore the inner voices that fuel self-doubt, second-guessing, and hesitation, and how to keep them from making decisions for you. Solid Ground Community is my monthly practice for people navigating career transitions, setbacks, and stretch seasons. Paid subscribers receive a video lesson, worksheet, and live coaching session each month. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thisisgrieftoo.substack.com/subscribe

May 25, 202615 min

What is My Purpose

The week I got fired from a job I loved, I kept opening my laptop and staring at a blank screen. I didn’t know what to update. I wasn’t sure who I was updating it for. My job title had been the answer to so many questions, including, it turned out, the question of who I was. That’s the thing nobody warns you about: career disappointment. The professional loss is real. But the identity loss is the one that knocks you sideways. And somewhere in that fog, a question surfaces. Usually in the middle of the night. Usually, when you’re too tired to push it away. What is my purpose? Here’s what I’ve learned — both from living through it and from walking dozens of clients through the same fire: that question isn’t a crisis. It’s an invitation. And career disappointment, as brutal as it is, might be the most direct route to your answer. Why Career Disappointment Hits So Deep Most of us have been quietly, unconsciously answering the purpose question with our job title for years. I’m a producer. I’m an analyst. I’m a director of marketing. When work is going well, that answer feels sufficient. But it was never really the answer. Your job is not your purpose — it’s a manifestation of it. And when the job disappears, what’s left is the real question you should have been sitting with all along. That’s not a failure. That’s a reckoning. And reckonings, handled right, can change everything. The Three Questions That Find Your Purpose I use a three-question framework with my clients, and I’ve come back to it myself more times than I can count. The questions are simple. They’re not easy. There’s a difference. Question 1: What brings you joy or flow? Not what you’re supposed to love. Not what looks impressive on a LinkedIn summary. What actually lights you up — where do you lose track of time? Learning something new? Creating something from scratch? Solving a puzzle no one else could crack? Supporting someone through something hard? Don’t overthink it. Write whatever comes up first. Question 2: What are you good at? Here’s a pro tip: don’t answer this one alone. Ask three people who know you well. We are chronically blind to our own gifts, especially the ones that come naturally. They don’t feel like gifts — they just feel like us . When I did this exercise, I was surprised to learn that people experienced me as a strategic organizer and planner. Those things came so easily to me I’d never counted them as skills. I thought everyone did that. They don’t. Question 3: What breaks your heart? This is the one people rush past. Don’t. What feels intolerable to you in the world? What injustice makes you angry? What gap keeps pulling your attention? What do you find yourself saying someone should do something about this — because, yes, that someone might be you. Purpose lives in the overlap of these three things. And career disappointment has a way of stripping away the noise so you can finally hear them. Gigi’s Story When Gigi came to me, she had just been laid off after 18 years as an analyst at Boeing — a job she’d landed right out of college. She was devastated. Her career had been a source of real pride, and her goals had always centered on stability: building a family, saving for retirement. But when we started working through the three questions, something shifted. What brought her joy was solving unsolvable problems. What she was good at was long-term data analysis and pattern recognition. And what broke her heart? The idea of leaving the world worse than she found it for her kids. Those three things pointed somewhere she hadn’t been looking: sustainability. Helping companies reduce their carbon footprint. Using her skills to address something that mattered to her at a gut level. Job security, she realized, had never been her purpose. It had been her strategy. Once she could see that, she stopped grieving the job and started building toward something real. Last I heard, she was interviewing for sustainability analyst roles and interviewing like someone who knew exactly why she was in the room. The disappointment didn’t take her purpose. It introduced her to it. How to Write Your Purpose Statement Once you’ve sat with the three questions, the next step is to put it into words. This is where a lot of people stall, so I want to make it as simple as possible. A purpose statement has three parts: what you love, what you’re good at, and what you’re called to change or contribute. You’re looking for the thread that ties all three together. One essential instruction: write it in the present tense. Not I want to, or I hope to . Declare it as if it’s already happening — because at the level of purpose, it is. The difference matters more than it sounds. “I want to help people tell their stories” keeps you in aspiration. “I help people tell their stories” puts you in motion. Here’s one of my favorite examples from a client: I am a warrior of freedom, nourishing and protecting my community through my talent as a chef and futurist, emboldening people to trust their gut. Read that, and you can feel the person behind it. That’s the goal. Not a job description — a declaration. Your first draft will be imperfect. Mine has been rewritten more times than I can count. The essence stays constant. The words get sharper over time. What matters is that you start. The Hardest Part The real barrier to writing a purpose statement isn’t the framework. It’s the fear of owning what you find. Owning your gifts means being responsible for them. Claiming your purpose means you can’t keep playing small and pretending you don’t know what you’re here for. That’s terrifying. It’s also the whole point. Bottom Line Career disappointment is not the end of your purpose story. For a lot of people, it’s the beginning of it. When the job goes away, so does the easy answer. What’s left, if you’re willing to look, is something more durable and more yours: the overlap of what you love, what you’re good at, and what you can’t stop caring about. That’s your purpose. It was there the whole time. The disruption just made it visible. Thanks for reading Career Strategy with Laverne McKinnon! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thisisgrieftoo.substack.com/subscribe

May 18, 202610 min

Starting Over at the Top 😳

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thisisgrieftoo.substack.com Robert got the call on a Friday afternoon. After trying to find a job in his industry for eighteen months, he faced the hard truth that for someone at his level, there were no viable openings. So he pivoted to Pharma doing sales. A far cry from Vice-President of Marketing at a film studio. He would start the new gig in two weeks. Robert was elated to have a gig, but he was dejected because his degree, his experience, and his wins didn’t translate to the new role. He would be starting in a sales training program with a “bunch of 20 year olds.” He confessed he was embarrassed and anxious to be a newbie. If you’re mid-career or later, and you’re stepping into something unfamiliar, you may feel horribly destabilized. Because knowing your stuff has always been your anchor. And now it’s not enough. Here’s what I want you to know: your credentials are not meaningless. But they’re not the whole story either. In new territory, something else takes the wheel. And most high achievers are the last to figure out what that something else actually is. The Default Move That Backfires When accomplished people step into unfamiliar terrain, they almost always do the same thing: they double down on what got them here. More preparation. More credentials. More proof that they belong. It’s the only playbook they know, and it’s worked for a long time. But in new territory, that strategy can work against you. The pressure to perform expertise you don’t yet have when you’re someone who typically hits it out of the ballpark can be debilitating. Instead of projecting competence, you end up projecting effort, which reads very differently in a room. Why This Happens Your identity has been wrapped up in being the expert for a long time. It’s what happens when you’re good at something and build a career around it. You’re rightly proud of those achievements. But when you’re no longer the expert, your nervous system reads that as danger. So you over-prepare. You over-explain. You puff up with overcompensation. Or you go the other direction and withdraw, waiting until you feel ready enough to show up. Observing the situation, taking notes, plotting and planning. None of these responses is what the new territory actually needs from you. The expert identity that protected you in your old lane becomes a kind of armor that keeps you from learning what you need to learn in order to succeed again. What Actually Moves the Needle When Robert completed his sales training, he told me he almost blew it. He was irritated with the pace of the program, he already knew what he was being told, and he was being trained by someone 15 years younger than him. After the second day, he went home and vented over dinner. Now, Robert’s a terrific dad, and his parental wisdom came back to him at the right moment. His 16-year-old son said to him in mid-vent, “Dad, I thought you said attitude is the best strategy.” Those words stopped Robert in his tracks. He knew he was impatient and didn’t “suffer fools.” But he also knew that attitude was the difference between a door opening or closing, a brief stint or a place to grow, and his own mental well-being. Robert thanked his son, told his family to throw marshmallows at him if he started complaining again, and course corrected his attitude. He started the third day of training with a beginner’s mind and brought cookies. What Attitude as Strategy Actually Looks Like Let me make this concrete, because “show up with a good attitude” is advice that sounds nice and means nothing without specifics. * Ask more questions than you answer. A friend of mine struggled with this early in her career. She had so many thoughts she wanted to share in every meeting that she started keeping a notebook just to get them out of her head. What she discovered was that writing things down calmed her nervous system. It freed her to actually listen. She stopped needing to show she knew everything and started learning more by asking. The relationships she built that way turned out to be some of the most valuable of her career. * Name what you don’t know before someone else does. Early in my time as an executive overseeing primetime programming at CBS, I was given a role that was a significant stretch. On my first set visit to a show that had already been on the air for two years, I said to the production team: you know more than I do. I’m here to learn and be a fan. The room shifted immediately. People who had been braced for a network executive to come in and assert authority instead opened doors they typically kept the suits out of. Naming a gap honestly is a form of leadership. * Let your enthusiasm be visible, and be specific about it. This one is genuinely underrated. Enthusiasm that is vague feels performative. Enthusiasm that is specific feels real. Show up on time or early. When something impresses you, say exactly what impressed you. Look people in the eye. Say hello. Say thank you in a way that names the thing you are grateful for. None of this is complicated, but it lands differently than people expect. * Protect your energy from the things that spiral you. Robert deleted social media during a stretch when he noticed he was using it when he felt bored. That was an important strategic decision because boredom for Robert meant he believed he knew everything he needed to know. Your attitude is an asset. Anything that drains it is worth taking seriously. The Nuance Worth Naming Focusing on attitude is not an argument against skill. You need a baseline. You need to be able to do the work at a competent level before any of this matters. But past that threshold, what differentiates you in new territory is relational and energetic, not just technical. The people who are deciding whether to bring you along, collaborate with you, or invest in you are asking a very human question: Do I want this person in the room when things get hard? That question is answered by how it feels to be around you. Bottom Line Robert finished his sales training. Turns out he didn’t know everything. But with his son’s reminder, he showed up curious, asked questions, and let people teach him. And that attitude shift made the training a pleasant experience. Your expertise is real. Your accomplishments are real. But in new territory, the thing that earns trust is how you show up with grace and interest. Ask more than you answer. Name the gap before someone else does. Let your enthusiasm be specific and visible. Those aren’t soft skills. They’re the strategy. If someone came to mind while you were reading this, please send it their way. You never know the impact a well-timed message can have. This Week One of the many things I respect about Courtney Romano is that she is not asking for permission in her career. She wears many hats: writer, director, producer, strategist, consultant and is a champion for Non-Dependent Filmmaking. Let’s find out how she does it. Journal Prompts Here are four journal prompts for paid Moonshot Mentor subscribers. These questions are designed to help you examine the role attitude has played in your career and what it might look like to lean into it more deliberately in a pivot.

April 20, 20267 min

What Do You Owe a Difficult Boss?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thisisgrieftoo.substack.com I was having lunch on the patio at Kiwami with a long-time colleague — we'd served together on the board of the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment — and we were debating whether to order the Kiwami tray or go à la carte. And then, I felt the energy around me shift. I didn’t turn my head, but I could see her outline in my peripheral vision. The boss who fired me. OMG, she was seated close enough to hear us order, and I was close enough I could smell her perfume. My first instinct: pretend she doesn't exist. Keep smiling. Keep chatting. Keep still. But the light-hearted parley about omakase was now nausea inducing and there was a buzzing in my ears. My boss, no, my ex -boss flagged a waiter and asked to move inside. I can't remember anything that happened after that. Here's what I know now that I didn't know then: what happened in my body had a name. My nervous system registered a perceived threat and responded accordingly — heart rate, shallow breath, the works. I was in a fight / flight / freeze / fawn moment — and caught between freezing and fawning. Why not do both when I’m under threat? What's interesting is that the threat wasn't real. I wasn't in danger. But my nervous system treated my ex-boss’ arrival as if something horrible was about to happen and I would be blind-sided all over again. Reader Question: Should I Reach Out to a Former (Not Awesome) Boss for a Job? I was reminded of this Kiwami experience recently when a reader sent me a question I suspect a lot of other people have too. He'd just learned that a former boss had landed a senior role at a new company. This was someone who had been skilled at managing up and promoting himself, but less focused on developing and advocating for his team. Now that this person was back in a leadership position, my reader found himself wondering: does it make sense to reach out? And if they ran into each other at some random place, what exactly should he do? We all know how important it is to maintain business relationships, but what do you do with the professional relationships that were genuinely complicated and triggered you into fight / flight / freeze / fawn mode? Thank you reader for such a powerful, timely question. The Tool: Friendly, Not Friends Earlier in my career, when I was a “baby” network executive, some of the senior executives I worked with were … well, I just have to say it. They were mean girls. When I would walk on set, they literally turned their backs and formed a circle. It was the kind of thing that makes you feel like you're back in junior high. My first response was to shrink, you know a kind of freezing. I started showing up at the last minute so I wouldn't have to stand on the periphery. I avoided the spaces where they gathered. I got smaller and smaller until one day I realized: their behavior was changing mine. And I hated it. I love having authentic conversations with people. I love collaborating and solving problems together. I love being nice because I know you never know what’s going on behind the scenes with someone. So I made a different choice: treat the mean girls the way I'd treat any stranger. Friendly, but not friends. A few months later, the ringleader pulled me aside and said: I don't know how you did it, but you did it. Everyone likes you now. It was a little crazy to hear that because my goal wasn't to make everyone like me. I just didn't want other people changing my behavior or my values. I didn't like who I was becoming.. Should You Reach Out? My Honest Answer So back to my reader's question: should you reach out to the former boss who wasn't great to you, now that they've landed somewhere new? My honest answer: only you know. What I'd encourage you to do is get clear on which value you're honoring with your choice — whichever way you go. I'll be transparent though: if it were me today, I would not reach out because I now prioritize a flat hierarchy and working with people who are willing to have hard conversations in a grounded manner. But I also don't know what's happening behind the scenes in the reader’s life. Financial pressure, health insurance, a shrinking market — these are real considerations that can make pursuing every opportunity not just reasonable but necessary. There's no shame in that math.

April 13, 20268 min

The Career Wins You Forgot To Count

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thisisgrieftoo.substack.com You know what you’ve lost. But can you name your wins? Most people in a career transition can recite their losses on demand. The VP title. The 401K contribution. The Friday happy hours with the work family. The satisfaction of knowing what the job is and how to do it. Ask them to name their wins? Awkward silence then a short, apologetic list they immediately start walking back. “I mean, it wasn’t that big a deal.” “Anyone could have done that.” This isn’t humility. It’s your brain doing exactly what it was designed to do. Your Brain Thinks It’s Helping - It’s Not Your brain tracks threats and losses with far more energy than it tracks wins. It’s called negativity bias and a lot has been written about it. Essentially, as humans we’re wired to look for what’s not working as a way to protect ourselves. During a career transition, exactly when you need a clear and accurate picture of your professional story, your brain is actively over-indexing on the negative. The losses stay top of mind while the wins get tucked into a bankers box and put into the back of a storage container. Over time, negative bias feels like the truth. And once it does, it starts calling the shots on every decision you make — what you apply for, how you talk about yourself, what you believe you’re capable of next. I learned this the hard way. And what made it worse is that my brain wasn’t the only thing working against me. I was also using the wrong measuring stick. Another Reason Your Wins Go Missing Several years ago, when I was pivoting out of independent film and TV producing, I went after three corporate opportunities, hard. Made it to the final round for all three. Got none of them. When I dug into why, the feedback was consistent: the candidates who were hired had more recent, measurable wins. Box office numbers. Emmy nominations. Projects that crossed the finish line in ways the industry recognized. Ouch. I knew how hard I’d been working. And I knew that a lot of the gap wasn’t about effort — it was about circumstance. COVID. The lockdowns. The writers’ and actors’ strikes. An industry that had slowed down so much, we could count the number of greenlit productions on one hand. Turns out my wins weren’t missing. They just didn’t fit the industry’s scoreboard. I’d spent years making sure the people on my projects felt respected. I knew this because they kept wanting to work together on new projects. I took great pride in responding to submissions when most people didn’t bother. Timely passes built relationships with agents, managers and other producers who understood that most of the time, the answer is no. Nobody was measuring those things that fell under the emotional intelligence category. They weren’t measurable in the same way the industry looks at ROI or KPIs. They were about humanity. I wasn’t winless. In fact, I was quite victorious. But me and the industry were using different measuring sticks so I felt less than. Finding The Wins Hiding In Your Story If your career story feels heavier on losses right now, here’s an exercise worth sitting with that includes the parts that haven’t made it onto your résumé yet. Start with the most obvious place: external recognition. Awards, nominations, acknowledgments — any moment where someone outside your own head said yes, this. Write them down without editing or qualifying. Then go a little deeper. What do people thank you for, come to you for, refer others to you for? This one matters more than it might seem. When something comes naturally to you, it stops feeling like a win — it just feels like any other day. But the fact that people consistently seek you out for it says a lot about you. Then ask yourself about the goals you hit without fireworks going off. The ones you set, achieved, and moved on from without a big victory dance. Those count too. Now here’s where it gets more interesting. We tend to define victory as coming in first, getting the public recognition, beating the competition. But that’s only one definition — and for many people, it’s not even the one that matters most. Think about a time you made a decision that honored your values, even when it went against what others expected. Or a time you went so far outside your comfort zone to make something happen that it surprised even you — even if the outcome wasn’t perfect, even if it wasn’t work-related at all. The stretch itself is a win. The integrity itself is a win. These moments are the most accurate picture of who you actually are. And then the really big question: what measuring stick have you been using? Did you choose it? Or did someone hand it to you a long time ago and you just never put it down? When you sit with that question — really sit with it — does your current definition of a win feel energizing? Or does it feel like a bar you can never quite clear? Where did it come from? A parent, an industry, a company culture, a moment early in your career when you decided what success had to look like? You get to choose whether to keep it. Mine shifted when I stopped measuring my career solely against greenlights and started asking: did the people around me feel respected? Did I show up with integrity? Did I make something better because I was there? Those wins were real because process matters to me. Why This Matters Right Now If you’re in a hard career moment, your brain is going to keep handing you the losses. That’s what it does. You have to actively go looking for the other side of the story — not to paper over what’s hard, but because your professional story is the foundation you build from. And if it’s missing its best chapters, you’re building on incomplete ground. This is the work we do inside Solid Ground, my paid membership community. During the month of April we’re mapping the highs and lows of your career to see the full picture, not just the parts your brain defaulted to. Every month I send a short lesson and worksheet to work through before we get on a live coaching call together. It’s one of my favorite things I do. If that sounds like what you need right now, becoming a paid subscriber gets you in. Bottom Line Your brain was built to remember the losses. It’s doing its job. But that means your career story has probably been edited — wins minimized, qualified, or left out entirely. Start with what people thank you for. Move toward the decisions you’re proud of, the stretches that surprised you, the moments you showed up with integrity even when no one was watching. Then ask the harder question: whose measuring stick have you been using, and is it actually yours? The answers might change what you think is true about yourself. If someone came to mind while you were reading this—please send it their way. You never know the impact a well-timed message can have. Related Content * Is There Something Wrong With Me? * How Perfectionism Leads To Imposter Syndrome * Is Expertise Really All It’s Cracked Up To Be? Longing To Feel Lighter? Professional heartbreak can leave you spinning. You replay what happened, question your judgment, get stuck in indecision, and worry you’ll never get your mojo back. Solid Ground is the paid member program inside the Moonshot Mentor Substack community that helps you move from spinning to forward motion. Paid members tell me they feel less weighed down. Empowered. Relaxed for the first time in a long time. Here’s the thing. It’s not because they got a pep talk. It’s because they finally got an accurate explanation for what’s happening and a way through it. You’ll get monthly video lessons with a guided companion to help you apply the work, live coaching for real time support, and weekly meditations and journal prompts to rebuild confidence and make decisions without panic. Become a paid member to access Solid Ground , stop misdiagnosing yourself as broken, and start moving again. Journal Prompts Here are 5 journal prompts for paid Solid Ground members. Studies have shown how spending time with your thoughts and feelings through journaling increases your ability to problem solve and calms your nervous system. These prompts will help you identify your wins.

April 6, 20265 min

Why Don't My Clothes Feel Like Me Anymore?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thisisgrieftoo.substack.com Remember when lockdown happened and there were all those stories about people showing up to Zoom meetings looking perfectly presentable from the waist up — and if you got a peek below the camera line, you’d find them in their underwear and socks? I loved that. It was so human. So real. It was a great contrast to the pressure to get my wardrobe choices right. All those spoken and unspoken rules: Women wear heels, men keep shirts tucked. Dress for the role you want, not the one you have. First impressions happen instantaneously and last a lifetime — so be careful of what your sweater says about you. When we all worked remotely in 2020, those rules — and a gazillion others — started feeling more like suggestions. But here’s the thing about rules going soft, whether by a global pandemic or a career transition, chosen or not: it’s disorienting. When the pre-approved look comes off, a lot of people don’t know what to put on instead. Because for years, the job dressed them, in every sense of the word. And when the job changes, so does the style guide. When I made the transition out of corporate and into indie filmmaking, my Manolos and Pradas were not only inconvenient on set — they genuinely felt like a costume I’d been wearing for decades. If you’re in the middle of a career change, contemplating one, moving up, or been pushed into one, you may no longer feel confident about what to wear — or even who you’re dressing for anymore. When you open your closet, do you stand there longer than you used to? What Your Wardrobe Is Actually Asking You Here’s what I’ve come to believe: getting dressed during a career transition isn’t really a fashion problem. It’s a values question. Let me explain what I mean. When I was in an executive gig, I genuinely valued the stability of that world — the sense that I could build something there over decades. Wearing those Manolos was part of that deal. I knew the rules, I understood the culture, and I made a conscious choice to dress for it. It wasn’t always comfortable, but it was mine to choose. My brother Jim is a great counterexample. Jim would sooner show up to a board meeting in a tuxedo than wear a suit to work — and he never has, except on his wedding day. He works in construction because he loves the outdoors, loves working with his hands, and is completely at ease getting grubby. His wardrobe is a direct expression of what he values. He just never had to think about it because his work and his values were two peas in a pod. When you’re in a career transition, you get a chance to ask a question most people never pause long enough to consider: Does what I’m wearing actually reflect what I value? Or have I just been dressing for someone else’s idea of who I should be?. The Difference Between Choosing and Disappearing When I dress in a way that feels true to me, I can regulate my nervous system. I stay grounded. I stay clear. In high stakes situations — interviews, pitches, hard conversations — that is an incredible advantage. At the same time, I’m not going to pretend the external piece doesn’t matter. It does. Every industry has a visual language. Every culture has unspoken dress codes. The goal isn’t to ignore that. The goal is to look at it clearly and decide — consciously, on your own terms — how much of it works for you and how much of it doesn’t. That’s the distinction I want you to hold onto: there’s a difference between choosing to dress for a culture and being swallowed by it. One is a decision. The other is erasure. Which brings me to someone I want you to meet. And Then There’s Dacy Dacy Gillespie is an anti-diet, weight-inclusive personal stylist whose Substack is about letting go of what you’ve been told to wear so you can find what’s actually yours. She also made a significant career pivot herself — from musician to stylist — so she knows firsthand what it feels like to rebuild your identity from the inside out. Where my work lives in the values and identity side of this conversation, Dacy lives in the practical, embodied, what-do-I-actually-put-on-my-body side. Together we cover a lot of ground. I’ve invited her to join me for a live conversation on Wednesday, April 9th at 12pm PST right here on Substack. We’re going to talk about her pivot, what it taught her, and what to wear when you’re job searching, interviewing, or just trying to figure out who you are now. No registration needed. Just show up. And if you have questions you want us to tackle, drop them in the comments below — or bring them live on the 9th. 👉 Follow Dacy on Substack here . If someone came to mind while you were reading this—please send it their way. You never know the impact a well-timed message can have. Related Content * Is There Something Wrong With Me? * How Perfectionism Leads To Imposter Syndrome * Is Expertise Really All It’s Cracked Up To Be? Longing To Feel Lighter? Professional heartbreak can leave you spinning. You replay what happened, question your judgment, get stuck in indecision, and worry you’ll never get your mojo back. Solid Ground is the paid member program inside the Moonshot Mentor Substack community that helps you move from spinning to forward motion. Paid members tell me they feel less weighed down. Empowered. Relaxed for the first time in a long time. Here’s the thing. It’s not because they got a pep talk. It’s because they finally got an accurate explanation for what’s happening and a way through it. You’ll get monthly video lessons with a guided companion to help you apply the work, live coaching for real time support, and weekly meditations and journal prompts to rebuild confidence and make decisions without panic. Become a paid member to access Solid Ground , stop misdiagnosing yourself as broken, and start moving again. Journal Prompts Here are three journal prompts for Solid Ground members. These are here to help you explore the connection between what you wear, what you value, and who you're becoming in this next chapter of your career.

March 30, 202612 min

How Do I Get My Work Energy Back? 🔋

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thisisgrieftoo.substack.com Most of us are gonna hit turbulence at one point or another in our careers. A faceplant. A missed opportunity. A project that goes sideways. A job that ends in a way that feels unfair or messy. The painful part is not just what happened. It’s what happens inside of you afterward. When a professional failure goes unprocessed, it turns inward. It shows up as imposter thoughts, burnout, low confidence, and that weird dread that kicks up when it’s time to take the next risk. Sometimes it even pushes people to abandon dreams they still care about, not because the dream stopped mattering, but because their internal capacity got depleted. That internal capacity to weather tough times is resilience. And when resilience is low, you don’t have the energy to keep going. What resilience means, for real Resilience is your capacity to recover after something knocks you off course. I think of it like the elasticity in a pair of Spanx – they bounce back to their natural shape after having been stretched to their full capacity. I’m wearing Spanx under this dress and it’s like a modern day miracle how it bounces back! When our resilience runs low, rigidity kicks in because we have no energy to be supple and nimble. It’s like the shoes I wore with the dress. They had no give what-so-ever. They looked lovely and solid, but fell apart that night. They broke under pressure. In your work, rigidity might sound like I’m going to keep doing things the same way despite market contractions or expansions, new responsibilities, or that the tools of the trade have changed. Elasticity sounds like: I’m adjusting my approach because the market has altered, I have new challenges or I need to close a skills gap. One more thing that matters here. Resilience is not an endless spring of water. It’s a well. It gets drained by stress, disappointment, and unprocessed emotion. It gets refilled by rest, pleasure, community, and by taking the time to metabolize the turbulence that knocked you off your path. So yes, self-care helps. But processing is how you stop the leak. Seven steps to refill your resilience after a failure Before you start re-filling with these steps, regulate your nervous system. If you try to do this work while you’re activated, your brain will turn it into a courtroom. Take a walk. Breathe slowly. Put on a favorite song and move your body. Do something that helps you feel grounded enough to think. Then walk through these steps. 1. Name what happened: What failed. What went off track. What didn’t get done. Say it plainly, with as few adjectives as possible. Think: incident report, not inner monologue. 2. Separate facts from story: Write down what you know is true, and what data supports it. Facts do not start with “I think” or “I feel.” Facts are observable. Then write down the story your brain added and notice how you are describing yourself and your part in what happened. 3. Name the impact: What did this cost you. Time. money. reputation. confidence. belonging. a sense of safety. Motivation. This matters because resilience gets drained when the impact is real and unnamed. 4. Own your part without blame: What was within your control that you would do differently next time. This is not the same as fault. It’s agency. Blame collapses. Agency mobilizes. 5. Identify what changed: This is where elasticity comes in. What shifted that made your old approach less effective. Market conditions. leadership. resources. technology. expectations. Timing. If you skip this step, you’ll default to pushing harder at a strategy that no longer fits reality. 6. Choose one course correction that matches your values: One small step. Not a life overhaul. Something you can do this week that aligns with who you want to be, even under pressure. A conversation you need to have. A boundary you need to set. A skill to update. A decision to stop discounting yourself. A new way of measuring progress. 7. Close the loop with a refill: This is the part most people skip. You faced something tender. You told the truth. You chose agency. Now refill the well on purpose. Do something that signals to your system: the danger has passed. Rest. laughter. prayer. art. a meal. a long shower. calling a friend. sitting in the sun. Processing builds resilience because it reduces emotional drag. Refilling builds resilience because it restores capacity. Both matter. Case Study: Heather Heather built a solid business as a copywriter. Then the last few years of AI advancement hit, and the work started drying up. Fewer gigs. Smaller budgets. Clients asking for “a quick rewrite” when what they really wanted was an entire campaign. It was devastating. Not just financially, but emotionally. She had built something she was proud of, and it felt like it was slipping out of her hands for reasons she couldn’t control. It also brought up shame. Her self-talk sounded like: I’m stupid. I should have seen this coming. I waited too long. I don’t know what I’m doing. When Heather and I started working together, we did not start with a pivot. We started with resilience. First, we named the facts. The marketplace had changed. Her clients were using AI tools to generate first drafts and they were hiring humans differently. They still needed thinking, positioning, voice, and editorial judgment, but they were no longer paying the same way for pure execution. Then we named the story. Heather had turned a market shift into an identity verdict that she should have seen this coming. So she was “naive” and “not cut out for this.” Next, we owned her part without shame. She had been trying to solve the problem by hustling harder, discounting her work, and saying yes to low value assignments because she was scared. That was the leak. Once she could see that clearly, she could see a course correction that matched her values: stop racing to the bottom, and start moving toward roles where her real advantage was still language, but at a higher altitude. Heather did a deep dive into how AI actually works in content workflows. The thing that felt like the enemy became a tool she could direct. She pivoted into content strategy and operations, helping a small team build an AI assisted content system that turns one strong idea into a smart set of assets across channels, without losing voice, clarity, or credibility. And here’s the quiet truth of that pivot. Heather did not abandon who she was. She carried her strengths forward and put them in a role that needed them. That’s elasticity. Bottom Line Resilience is not about pretending something didn’t hurt. It’s the ability to recover your capacity after it did. When you process what happened with honesty and without turning it into a verdict about you, you stop bleeding energy. When you add intentional refilling, you restore enough internal room to make your next decision from clarity instead of fear. That’s how you get your resilience back. If you’re reading this and thinking, “Okay, but I still feel wrung out,” Solid Ground is for that. It’s my paid membership space for rebuilding capacity after career heartbreak so you can feel more like yourself again and get unstuck without white knuckling it. Monthly lessons and worksheets, live coaching, journal prompts, and guided meditations. If someone came to mind while you were reading this—please send it their way. You never know the impact a well-timed message can have. Related Content * Is There Something Wrong With Me? * How Perfectionism Leads To Imposter Syndrome * Is Expertise Really All It’s Cracked Up To Be? Longing To Feel Lighter? Professional heartbreak can leave you spinning. You replay what happened, question your judgment, get stuck in indecision, and worry you’ll never get your mojo back. Solid Ground is the paid member program inside the Moonshot Mentor Substack community that helps you move from spinning to forward motion. Paid members tell me they feel less weighed down. Empowered. Relaxed for the first time in a long time. Here’s the thing. It’s not because they got a pep talk. It’s because they finally got an accurate explanation for what’s happening and a way through it. You’ll get monthly video lessons with a guided companion to help you apply the work, live coaching for real time support, and weekly meditations and journal prompts to rebuild confidence and make decisions without panic. Become a paid member to access Solid Ground , stop misdiagnosing yourself as broken, and start moving again. Journal Prompts Here are 5 journal prompts for Solid Ground members. Use these to rebuild resilience after a recent professional hit, without turning it into a story about who you are.